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Russian Search TipsThu, 26 Feb 2015 20:24:06 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.1Russian online advertising industry turnover up 18% in 2014http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/russian-online-advertising-turnover-up-18-in-2014/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/russian-online-advertising-turnover-up-18-in-2014/#commentsThu, 26 Feb 2015 20:20:49 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3243Digital advertising turnover in Russia has been increasing for the last 4 years. Despite the unstable economic situation, advertising budgets increased in 2014 – for the 5th year in a row. The Association of Communication Agencies in Russia (ACAR) reported [in Russian] that expenditures on online advertising increased by 18% in the first half of 2014. […]

]]>Digital advertising turnover in Russia has been increasing for the last 4 years. Despite the unstable economic situation, advertising budgets increased in 2014 – for the 5th year in a row. The Association of Communication Agencies in Russia (ACAR) reported [in Russian] that expenditures on online advertising increased by 18% in the first half of 2014. Contextual advertising (SEM) showed the highest growth figures – 27% comparing to the same period of 2013. Display advertising budgets on the other hand decreased by 5%.

Advertising spend on TV and radio advertising increased as well, but to a smaller extent (2%). The only medium that has decreased in volume is print (-11%).

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/russian-online-advertising-turnover-up-18-in-2014/feed/0Russian mobile app scene: who makes money and who gets downloadshttp://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/russian-mobile-app-scene-who-makes-money-and-who-gets-downloads/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/russian-mobile-app-scene-who-makes-money-and-who-gets-downloads/#commentsMon, 23 Feb 2015 18:51:03 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3221Russia, despite the relatively late adoption of smartphone technology, managed to become one of the largest markets in the world in terms of mobile app usage. With the population of 143 million people and quite high mobile Internet penetration, Russia made it to top 10 countries in terms of app downloads and in-app revenues, reports App […]

]]>Russia, despite the relatively late adoption of smartphone technology, managed to become one of the largest markets in the world in terms of mobile app usage. With the population of 143 million people and quite high mobile Internet penetration, Russia made it to top 10 countries in terms of app downloads and in-app revenues, reports App Annie.

Despite the dominance of Android that holds nearly 70% of the Russian smartphone market Russia is strong on iOS as well, according to App Annie’s report both in terms of downloads and revenues.

In terms of downloads, My Talking Tom was the most successful mobile game in Russia in 2014, followed by Subway Surfers, Despicable Me and Hill Climb Racing.

When it comes to revenues however, the list looks very different. Clash of Clans earned the most money on in-app purchases in Russia, followed by Game of War and Galaxy Legend.

Mobile game developers that generated most downloads in Russia in 2014 are Gameloft, Rovio and Electronic Arts.

The most in-app revenues were generated by Supercell, followed by Tap4Fun and Electronic Arts.

Top non-gaming apps and publishers in Russia

When it comes to non-gaming apps and publishers, there are a lot more local players in the top charts. Mobile apps of Russian social networks – VK and Odnoklassniki (Classmates in App Annie’s report) – are extremely popular. Yandex.Navigator, which is a GPS app developed, obviously, by Yandex is also very common to see on Russian smartphones.

When it comes to app developers, again the local players Mail.ru (VK and Odnoklassniki among others) and Yandex (multiple apps) are leading the rating of most downloaded apps in Russia.

Читай! Бесплатно (Read! Free), an app for reading digital books from LitRes, became the most successful in terms of in-app revenues, followed by Odnoklassniki and Viber, who introduced both paid calling and paid stickers in 2014. Dating apps Badoo, LovePlanet and Mamba Dating are also among the leaders.

Top list of app developers generating in-app revenues in Russia is dominated by local companies. LitRes, the publisher of Read!, Navitel (navigation app Navitel Navigator) and Mail.ru Group are the leading apps in Russia in terms of in-app earnings.

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/russian-mobile-app-scene-who-makes-money-and-who-gets-downloads/feed/0Quick guide to configuring goals in Yandex.Metricahttp://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/quick-guide-to-configuring-goals-in-yandex-metrica/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/quick-guide-to-configuring-goals-in-yandex-metrica/#commentsWed, 18 Feb 2015 17:33:35 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3181Yandex Metrica is a powerful web analytics tool that gives extensive insights into web traffic, performance of digital marketing channels and user behavior. Metrica, similarly to Google Analytics, records every visit to the site with the help of a snippet of code placed on all pages. There are several types of goals that can be […]

]]>Yandex Metrica is a powerful web analytics tool that gives extensive insights into web traffic, performance of digital marketing channels and user behavior. Metrica, similarly to Google Analytics, records every visit to the site with the help of a snippet of code placed on all pages.

There are several types of goals that can be configured in Yandex.Metrica that can be used for measuring different steps of the user journey:

A specified number of pages viewed by visitors to the site

A specific webpage or set of pages on your site that you want users to visit (e.g. payment confirmation page)

An event on the site that serves as a success indicator (e.g. account creation or sale)

A sequence of steps that a visitor performs to reach a goal (i.e. a funnels)

Configuring goals in Yandex.Metrica

Yandex.Metrica goals are configured on a counter level. To access the configuration menu, select the counter of interest and press edit (the green pen on the right appears when hovering over the counter name).

Once reached “Edit counter” menu, navigate to Goals tab.

In the Goals tab, select the type of goal you want to create and proceed with configuration.

Types of Yandex.Metrica goals

A specified number of pages viewed by visitors to the site

For content-centric websites without an e-commerce component, a certain number of viewed pages could be considered a conversion.

To specify a page view-based goal, just indicate the necessary number in the Page views field.

URL-based goal

This is one of the most common ways to create goals, both in Yandex Metrica and Google Analytics. To configure a URL-based goal in Metrica you need to indicate one or several conditions for URL matching.

If your website has several pages that indicate a successful goal completion, it is possible to make them all a part of one goal. URLs are joined by logical operator “OR” and the goal will be considered completed if a user viewed a page with any of the included in it URLs.

It is possible to include maximum of 10 URLs in one goal.

Event-based goals

Event-based goals are also very common for both Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica. Events are specified in the goal configuration interface and there will be a snippet of code that needs to be added to the actual page / form / button etc.

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/quick-guide-to-configuring-goals-in-yandex-metrica/feed/28 most common Yandex SEO penalties and filtershttp://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/yandex-seo-penalties-and-filters/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/yandex-seo-penalties-and-filters/#commentsThu, 12 Feb 2015 07:20:30 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3008Yandex SEO has become much more complicated during the last few years, and as new spam techniques evolved and found loopholes in new search algorithms, Yandex created new types of penalties and filters to fight them. A few years ago I wrote a post on Yandex SEO penalties, but since then the list has become much longer. Let’s […]

]]>Yandex SEO has become much more complicated during the last few years, and as new spam techniques evolved and found loopholes in new search algorithms, Yandex created new types of penalties and filters to fight them.

A few years ago I wrote a post on Yandex SEO penalties, but since then the list has become much longer. Let’s have a look at the most common types of penalties Yandex can apply to a website.

Common reasons for Yandex SEO penalties and filters

Yandex aims to deliver the best possible answers to its users’ search queries, and the sites that are not regarded as quality, sooner or later will be affected by one of the penalties or filters listed below:

1. Doorways

Definition: pages and sites, whose primary purpose is to redirect the user to another website, using links or redirects.

Potential penalty: removal from Yandex search results.

2. Cloaking

Definition: pages and sites that serve different content to users and search engine bots in order to manipulate search engine rankings.

Potential penalty: removal from Yandex search results.

3. Hidden text

4. Low quality content

Definition: sites that contain duplicate content, machine translated content, poorly written content as well as any other type of content that does not create any value for the user. Most often the sites that are affected by this type of filter are created solely for selling links or advertisement placements, however in some cases the penalty can affect real brands / sites that neglected copywriting for too long.

Generally Yandex is very strict when it comes to content quality (much more strict than Google.ru), and not surprisingly, content-relates penalties and filters are the most common when it comes to Yandex SEO. Multiple versions of AGS penalty – penalty against low quality sites – have been introduced during the years. The consequences of the latest versions of AGS can be very harsh, and the recovery process – time-consuming and expensive.

5. Affiliate sites

Definition: sites that are created for selling products and services provided by other sites within their affiliate programs.

With exceptions of those few affiliates, who actively work with content, reviews and social media, most affiliate sites have no real value to the user in the eyes of Yandex as they do not produce their own original content and do not provide any additional services.

Potential penalty: full or partial removal from Yandex search results, drop in rankings.

7. Simulating user actions

It is a well-known fact that Yandex gives a lot of weight to so-called “behavioral factors“. Behavioral factors, such as, for example, SERP CTR, bounce rate back to the SERPs, average time spent on site etc., are used by Yandex in order to understand how users react and interact with a website. High SERP CTR and low bounce rate back to the SERPs tell Yandex that users find the site interesting, and vice versa.

Of course, Russian SEO industry quickly adopted to the algorithm producing multiple tools for artificial inflating of behavioral factors. While the tools are said to work well, Yandex is getting better and better at detecting artificial behaviors and punishing the cheaters.

Potential penalty: full or partial removal from Yandex search results, drop in rankings.

8. Excessive or intrusive advertising

Definition: sites that use intrusive advertising formats such as popup, popunder , clickunder and similar, which prevent users from viewing the main content of the website as well as advertising with “shocking” content.

Potential penalty: drop in rankings.

Actions for recovering from a Yandex SEO penalty

If you experience an unnatural drop in rankings or pages in Yandex search index, most likely a filter or a penalty has been applied to your site during the latest search index update. While most penalties are lifted once the issue causing the penalty is fixed, there are some that can take much longer time to identify and to recover from.

In those cases it can be helpful to reach out to Yandex support and ask for guidance. The contact form for SEO-related questions can be accessed via Yandex.Webmaster.

Some of the sites however, mainly doorways and other extremely spammy types, might never come back regardless of the rescue efforts.

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/yandex-seo-penalties-and-filters/feed/1Online Marketing in Russia: Top 5 Trends for 2015http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/online-marketing-russia-top-5-trends-2015/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/online-marketing-russia-top-5-trends-2015/#commentsTue, 10 Feb 2015 16:32:22 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3162In online marketing, it’s nice to have a feeling for trends. It helps adapt fast to the digital climate change and get the best out of it. Working in Russian Internet today, quick reaction is not an option, it’s a must. And actually, Russian advertisers are pretty good at it, given the current situation in […]

]]>In online marketing, it’s nice to have a feeling for trends. It helps adapt fast to the digital climate change and get the best out of it. Working in Russian Internet today, quick reaction is not an option, it’s a must. And actually, Russian advertisers are pretty good at it, given the current situation in Russia’s economic space. So, to be just as well-prepared as them, we’ve collected for you five major trends expected to dominate the digital marketing in Russia this year. Pick up your favorite!

1. Retargeting

Already a trend of 2014, retargeting will continue to rein as online shops are competing to retain their visitors and turn them into buyers. In 2014, Marin Software experts made a survey among the marketers: 88% have already mastered retargeting and more than half of them (56%) intend to increase their budgets for it this year. The top channels for retargeting are display advertising (81% use), paid search (77% use) and social networks (48% use).

2. SMM diversity

In 2015, it becomes popular to advertise on multiple social networks at once – not only on the three major ones, Facebook, vKontakte and Odnoklassniki, but on others as well: such as Tumblr, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, etc.

3. Mobile advertising

Today, having a website with a version for tablets or smartphones is a must for any serious business. In 2015, this trend will pick up where it left off in 2014 – adaptability and user-friendly web navigation. But this year, we’ll see many companies adding mobile applications to help them discreetly follow the user from one gadget to another, thus managing their behavior and stimulating demand.

4. Performance-based marketing

Marketers may begin reallocating their advertising budgets so that to move them from any extra projects, media and teaser ads which aim at increasing the audience coverage, but do not bring direct profits. As a result, some of them may stop using marketing tools that are usually used for brand awareness, rather switching to tools that bring the highest results. This tendency was also noticed in Russia during the 2008-2009 crises, and for many it was a winning strategy for staying in top of the search lists.

5. High demand for quality SEO

The link relevance for ranking in Yandex was reduced, but linking will still be an important ranking factor in many verticals. That’s why this year online advertisers will care even more to have high quality links on their clients’ websites. High quality content is also a trend: marketers seek to improve the user behavior, reducing the bounce rate, increasing page views and keeping users longer on sites.

The trends we began to see in 2014 will gather pace, while some shifts in focus are likely to happen. Well, love for challenges is in marketers’ blood and Russian online advertisers are definitely up for it. What’s life without challenges anyway?

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/online-marketing-russia-top-5-trends-2015/feed/0Banner ads on Yandex: affecting your brandhttp://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/banner-ads-yandex-affecting-brand/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/banner-ads-yandex-affecting-brand/#commentsTue, 03 Feb 2015 01:46:33 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3125To measure if banners are actually bringing results can be challenging, so naturally I got curious when I saw a recent study on banner ads. IMHO Vi, a big ad selling agency in Russia, has studied effectiveness of the advertising campaign for a smartphone. To do this, they’ve placed a banner on the home page […]

]]>To measure if banners are actually bringing results can be challenging, so naturally I got curious when I saw a recent study on banner ads.

IMHO Vi, a big ad selling agency in Russia, has studied effectiveness of the advertising campaign for a smartphone. To do this, they’ve placed a banner on the home page of Yandex, the largest internet portal in Russia, and analyzed how it affected the brand metrics, such as brand awareness, brand recall and purchase intent. Let’s see what they have to say!

The ad campaign was running from 10 to 16 November 2014, with a horizontal 728×90 banner placed on Yandex home page. The survey included 350 people who were questioned before the ad campaign started, so that to assess the general knowledge about the brand. Then, 500 respondents were shown the ad and 350 respondents were used as the control group. And all of them were active Internet users, in 18-44 age group, residing in Russia.

Study results show that users who saw the banner ad of the smartphone on Yandex home page recognized the brand more often (unaided brand recall):

Plus, the results show a more than three-fold increase (+201%) for top of the mind recall and +67% for top-3 of the mind recall:Question: “What smartphone brands do you know? Write 5 names that first come to your mind”

And, users who saw the banner displayed a greater interest in purchasing the advertised smartphone model (purchase intent): +67% of those who felt like buying it and +173% of those who really felt like buying it.

Question: “If you decided on buying a smartphone tomorrow, would you feel like buying this model?”

Well, as I see it, banner ads are still popular (especially for branding), so they won’t go away from the large websites in Russia – even if there are speculations about the budget cuts on them in 2015. Either way, people keep buying things when they actually see them, so brand awareness tools add some extra visibility to back up other strategies, such as standard ads on Yandex.Direct, for example. But then again, measuring results from a banner is not always easy, and that’s when something like the numbers above may come handy.

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/02/banner-ads-yandex-affecting-brand/feed/1Yandex and VK make it to Top 100 sites in the UShttp://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/yandex-vk-make-top-100-sites-us/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/yandex-vk-make-top-100-sites-us/#commentsThu, 22 Jan 2015 19:46:54 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3115The largest social network in Russia vKontakte and Russia’s leading search engine Yandex were among 100 most visited sites in the US during 2014, according to SimilarWeb. VK ended up at 81th place in the rating and Yandex – at 91st. SimilarWeb do not speculate about the reasons for such high popularity of Russian sites in […]

]]>The largest social network in Russia vKontakte and Russia’s leading search engine Yandex were among 100 most visited sites in the US during 2014, according to SimilarWeb. VK ended up at 81th place in the rating and Yandex – at 91st.

SimilarWeb do not speculate about the reasons for such high popularity of Russian sites in the US. Any thoughts, folks? :)

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/yandex-vk-make-top-100-sites-us/feed/3Top social networks in Russia: latest numbers and trendshttp://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-social-networks-russia-latest-numbers-trends/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-social-networks-russia-latest-numbers-trends/#commentsTue, 20 Jan 2015 15:19:16 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3092Just in time for making our New Year’s marketing resolutions, we’re getting a special treat – a study on social media users in Russia, with lots of the latest numbers and trends to enjoy. Actually, betting on social networks in 2015 sounds good to me – the experts predict social media marketing and retargeting to […]

]]>Just in time for making our New Year’s marketing resolutions, we’re getting a special treat – a study on social media users in Russia, with lots of the latest numbers and trends to enjoy. Actually, betting on social networks in 2015 sounds good to me – the experts predict social media marketing and retargeting to be on the rise. Plus, this trend comes along with the rapid growth of mobile users who become the majority on the Russian Internet.

The data comes from Brand Analytics, with details on the age, gender, regional distribution and even positive vibes of those writing on social networks in Russia. VKontakte (Vk), the largest Russia’s social network, holds on to its top position, having the biggest monthly audience and the most active writers:

*TNS Web Index, November 2014. Data on Twitter is based on the number of users per day, frequency of visits per month

So, in November 2014 vKontakte had about 55 million users, followed by Odnoklassniki with 40 million visitors. Moi Mir (My World) and Facebook are the closest to each other by the number of visitors, with about 25 and 24 million of monthly visitors respectively. Although Twitter keeps growing in Russia, according to Brand Analytics it only rounds out the top-7, having about 8.5 million visits a month.

VKontakte also has the most active authors (almost 24 million for December 2014). The 2nd and 3rd positions are taken by Instagram and Twitter, but they lag far behind Vk – they have about 2. 7 and 2.1 million authors respectively. However, Twitter had almost 251 million posts per month, hence getting ahead of vKontakte (over 244 million of monthly posts):

In addition, last December showed that Twitter was the most engaging social network – on the average, there were about 120 posts per author. By contrast, vKontakte had 12 times fewer posts, while Moi Mir showed the lowest number, about 6 messages a month:

The youngest people hang out in vKontakte – 24% of its users are under 18, while just over 10% of them stay on Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir. Vk also gets the biggest number of 18-34 year olds who write at least one post a month (almost 70%). A more mature audience in Russia (25-44 year olds) uses LiveJournal and Facebook – 70% and 65% respectively. Interestingly, a quarter of Facebook users are over 45, while people of the same age don’t use vKontakte at all.

Most of those over 45 socialize in Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir (about 33-37%), while 55+ age group is bigger in Odnoklassniki (nearly 20%) than in Moi Mir (about 16%). As for the gender, Instagram and Odnoklassniki have more women than others (70.6% and 70.2%), while other top social networks in Russia are quite equal by gender. Of course, not all the social media users disclose their gender or age, so the above numbers are rough, but we still get a picture:

Most Twitter, Instagram and Facebook posts come from Moscow and St. Petersburg residents. However, St. Petersburg has the most active vKontakte users (40% of all who lives there) compared to Moscow (29%). And nationwide, VKontakte is the leading social media by the number of posts – over 16% people in Russia are writing there.

And finally, let’s see who is more positive in the world of Russia’s social networks. Brand Analytics found out it their way: they analyzed 528 million of Russian posts, such as “I like it”, “I love it”, “I hate it”, “It’s irritating” and so on, written by 35 million authors across social media. In the end, over 70% of all the posts came out as positive. Instagram sounds like most positive (91%), followed by Moi Mir (88%), vKontakte (83%) and Facebook (82%), while LiveJournal closes the list (71%):

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-social-networks-russia-latest-numbers-trends/feed/0Top 10 Russia’s largest media in 2014http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-10-russias-largest-media-2014/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-10-russias-largest-media-2014/#commentsWed, 14 Jan 2015 07:49:31 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=3000Despite the unstable economic climate Russian advertising industry keeps developing. In the first half of 2014 the growth of Russian advertising budgets landed at 6%. Online advertising grew the most, TV and radio – slightly, while print lost a low of advertisers’ money. Let’s find out who are the largest players on the Russian media scene – according […]

]]>Despite the unstable economic climate Russian advertising industry keeps developing. In the first half of 2014 the growth of Russian advertising budgets landed at 6%. Online advertising grew the most, TV and radio – slightly, while print lost a low of advertisers’ money. Let’s find out who are the largest players on the Russian media scene – according to TNS Russia and Sostav.ru.

The most popular TV channels in Russia

Despite Yandex’s monthly audience surpassed Channel 1 already in 2012, all in all TV continues to be the most popular medium in Russia. According to TNS, the leading TV channels reach 99% of the Russian population. 73% of Russian people watch TV daily, and 93% – at least once a week.

Among the numerous Russian TV channels Channel 1 (Первый канал) has kept its leading position in the country and even increased its market share from 13.7% in 2013 to 14.5% in 2014. The second most popular TV channel is Russia 1 (Россия 1), which also managed to strengthen its position on the market increasing the market share from from 12.8% to 13.2% during 2014. The third largest channel – NTV (НТВ) lost audience in 2014; its market share went down from 12.7% to 11.2% during the year.

Largest TV channels in Russia

Despite the highest reach, TV stands for only 47% of advertising expenditures in Russia, however the experts predict a slight increase in 2015 based on experiences from other economic downtimes in the country.

Internet is one of the fastest growing media in Russia when it comes to advertising spend. The latest numbers from ACAR (Association of Communication Agencies in Russia) show that online advertising expenditures in Russia grew by 20% in H1 of 2014 comparing to the same period of the previous year, and the trend continued throughout the 3rd quarter of the year.

The most popular newspapers and magazines in Russia

Print in Russia have been losing both audience and advertising budgets for several years, and 2014 was not an exception. During the entire 2014 print lost 10% of ad spend per quarter. Yet, some of the newspapers and magazines still hold very strong positions in the market. “Антенна/Телесемь” (TV guide and entertainment) came out as a leader in terms of reach, followed by “За рулем” (auto), “Аргументы и Факты” (nation-wide newspaper) and “Cosmopolitan” (fashion).

The most popular radio stations in Russia

Radio has been the most stable medium in terms of both audience and advertising expenditures. The largest radio station in Russia according to TNS is “Европа Плюс” followed by “Дорожное радио”, “Авторадио” and “Русское Радио”.

2015 is expected to be a tougher year for the Russian economy. Based on the experiences from the previous downturns (e.g. 2008-2009), the experts expect the following trends to prevail in the Russian advertising industry:

– Channels that are normally used to raise awareness will see decreased budgets.

In other words, the Russian market is following the trend we have seen in many of the Western countries the last years. But since the overall market is going through such a rough time I would not be surprised if we would see even more focus toward the performance-based marketing in the coming year.

]]>http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/top-10-russias-largest-media-2014/feed/0Store rating extensions come to Yandex.Directhttp://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/store-rating-extensions-come-yandex-direct/
http://www.russiansearchtips.com/2015/01/store-rating-extensions-come-yandex-direct/#commentsSun, 11 Jan 2015 18:51:19 +0000http://www.russiansearchtips.com/?p=2976In the end of December last year Yandex announced new type of extension for Yandex.Direct ads – store rating extension – which, similarly to Google’s seller rating extension, adds 1 to 5 star rating next to each eligible PPC ad. The early observations show that store rating extensions increase ad CTR by about 1.5%, which is of […]

]]>In the end of December last year Yandex announced new type of extension for Yandex.Direct ads – store rating extension – which, similarly to Google’s seller rating extension, adds 1 to 5 star rating next to each eligible PPC ad.

The early observations show that store rating extensions increase ad CTR by about 1.5%, which is of course nice, but significantly lower that the effect Google advertisers see from obtaining seller rating extensions. Some case studies show 17-20% increase in AdWords CTR once the stars appear next to the ads, and I have seen even bigger increase for some accounts in my practice. This said, the CTR of Yandex.Direct ads in Russia is usually higher than CTR of AdWords ads, with or without extensions. Besides, seller rating extension is not available in Google.ru.

Yandex.Market is a very popular price comparison service in Russia with about 20 million monthly users. Historically the service had very little connection with Yandex.Direct and if anything, sometimes cannibalised on organic search listings rather than interfering with PPC ads. Adding ratings from Yandex.Market to Yandex.Direct ads is one of the first attempts to bring the two services closer together.

Being listed in Yandex.Market is a challenge of its own. As I explained in one of my recent posts on Russian Search Marketing, Yandex.Market has very strict requirements for all aspects of e-commerce – from site structure to quality of customer support. Once passed the moderation for Yandex.Market listing, getting store ratings for PPC ads is easy. The stars will appear automatically if:

1. The store has been on Yandex.Market for more than 30 days.

2. The rating hasn’t been removed by the Yandex.Market moderators.

3. The store hasn’t been disconnected from Yandex.Market for longer 30 days.

Unlike Google that adds and removes star ratings automatically, Yandex.Direct has a feature that allows disabling the extension.

By default the store rating extension is enabled for all Yandex.Direct and Yandex.Market advertisers.